Creating Guides

My first and current project for my internship is putting together a guide that will teach MCFL staff how to create blog posts on their staff site. The original guide was a "quick and dirty" how-to that went over the basic steps--essentially providing just enough information to allow the staff to create said content. However, now the task is to create a guide that will be much more illustrative and provide information on some of the other things they can add to their blog post (as well as include the basics found in the first guide).

Before I even started the project, I took a look at the available guides--the original guide that my work will replace and another guide created for posting blogs on the library's public site. The former gave me an idea of what skill level I would need to accommodate, and the latter let me see an example of a much more complete guide that included illustrations. It is important when creating anything to know your audience and make sure that you are keeping in mind the lowest denominator (aka the lowest skill level) of those that will be using it. This is actually a concept that came up in my first coding class of my MLIS program. To be truly "user friendly," your content will need to reach the greatest number of users possible. Because I knew that screenshots of the pages would be particularly helpful for those less computer savvy, this was my first step. I took a number of screenshots, from the log-in page for the staff all the way through the process to where they save and publish their blog entry.

My next step was to start outlining the process--using language that was not heavy in technical jargon, of course--and editing the screenshots to serve as useful illustrations. This is the part I'm still in the process of completing. As I've been editing, I've realized that there are additional screenshots of particular buttons/features that I now want to include. I'm hoping that this guide doesn't become TOO big with everything that I would like to put in it. I haven't been given a maximum page length, but I know that the longer the guide the less likely anyone will read the entire thing. It needs to be useful both in content and in length; since this is for library staff, I must assume that my audience does not have a lot of free time to read a lengthy how-to guide.

I actually made a discovery as I was doing this (never stop trying to learn new things!). I'm creating the original guide using Microsoft Word, with the intent to convert it into a .pdf file for the format that will actually be made available to the library's staff; this is done both for longevity and to make sure users can't accidentally delete content of the guide and not know how to bring it back, which I can foresee happening with an editable Word file (yes I know editing can be restricted, but that can create problems if passwords to allow future changes are lost). Anyway, as I was using Word, I discovered the beauty of text boxes (something I've never used in Word before because c'mon, it's Word!). One in particular was of a style very appropriate to that of the guide, so now I'm using it to compartmentalize information that may seem like a "duh!" kind of thing for those with my skill level, but would not be immediately obvious to those with less computer comfort. That way, more experienced users can easily skip over this information and spend less time reading/skimming through text they don't need. It's a way to increase accessibility through visual cues. Neat, huh?

I'm very pleased with how the guide has turned out so far and hope to have it completed by tomorrow (I would prefer to finish it today). I've definitely enjoyed letting my creativity play a major role in the design--perhaps this is a skill set I can continue to work on and use to market myself for future library positions.